Eat This Newsletter: Call a Sprat a Sprat

You could call it doggedly pursuing the truth wherever it may lead. You could also call it borderline obsessive. Whatever you call it, here is a piece only for supporters of the podcast that chases down what the Swedes call “ansjovis”.

In the course of digging into the previous podcast, on Chris Beckman’s Swedish Conundrum, I learned first that ansjovis are not anchovies, and probably never were. Chris pointed me to a piece by Sophia Hendrikx that explained how these fish had been mislabelled since at least the 16th century. Swedish ansjovis are sprats, Sprattus sprattus.

Hendrikx called on two types of confusion, Babylonian and fraudulent, as possible explanations. Babylonian confusion is just that, one name given to more than one species. Fraudulent confusion deliberately calls a less desirable (i.e. less expensive) fish by the name of one that is more desirable and so more profitable. In Sweden, Hendrikx reckons, base motives are to blame.

“In their culinary application, these species are more or less interchangeable, inviting fraudulent labelling which is facilitated by the fact that anchovies do not occur near Scandinavia.”